Anti-tobacco movement welcomes plain packs

ANTI-TOBACCO campaigners are welcoming the beginning of mandatory plain-packaging on tobacco products from Saturday, but say there is still more that could be done.

Smokers were still lining up at checkouts at Woolworth's in Sydney's CBD on Friday, as Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek heralded the official end of what she called big tobacco's last advertising avenue in Australia - packaging.

She said the new olive-brown packaging on tobacco products, mandatory from Saturday, has already had some effect.

"I have had a few letters ... with smokers saying to me, 'Oh the cigarettes don't taste the same as they used to'," Ms Plibersek told reporters.

With tobacco companies reporting no changes to the pack's contents, she said it was proof the changes were having a "psychological effect".

"It's less attractive to smoke."

While the government wouldn't be sending, "storm troopers" around to police the changes on Saturday, big retailers like Woolworths and Coles - which sell 70 per cent of tobacco - reported being compliant, she said.

Meanwhile, a "majority" of small businesses were also ready for the changes.

"We have had some difficulties with companies like Philip Morris who have refused to take back non-compliant stock."

She said she had written to the company, calling on them to take back the products.

Protecting Children from Tobacco Coalition coordinator Stafford Sanders welcomed the changes, saying it should curb the number of young smokers, with the vast majority of people taking up the habit before they turn 18.

But while he said plain packaging was an "important part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce smoking uptake" there was still work to be done.

"We could reach virtually zero prevalence in 10 or 15 years if we were determined enough," he told AAP.

Among measures proposed was regulating the cigarette's contents by prohibiting tobacco flavourings and additives and reducing nicotine or introducing a "cutoff birth year", where retailers would not be permitted to sell tobacco to anyone born after that year.

"We are also concerned that the federal Coalition parties continue to accept tobacco company donations," Mr Sanders said.

"We have been urging those parties for a long time to end that relationship."

Ms Plibersek said the government was not thinking of regulating tobacco contents at the moment.

Professor Mike Morgan from the Melbourne Dentist School said the size of graphic photographs would also increase from Saturday, with the images set to take up 75 per cent of the packaging, rather than 30 per cent.

"We have a clear responsibility to inform the Australian community about the disastrous effects that smoking has on all aspects of health and this includes the role that tobacco has in causing oral cancers, throat cancers and gum diseases," he said in a statement.